98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

I noticed that it's using box-shadow for the "3d effect" on buttons and window borders.

I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use the "inset" or "outset" border-style [0] which pretty nobody uses anymore these days. I thought this kind of design is pretty much why these border-styles exist.

[0]: https://htmldog.com/references/css/properties/border-style/

It may be because the transition wouldn't be as smooth as it is now?

Having done one of these myself a while ago, box-shadow was the only way to get the pixelated border corners.

Here's the mixin I done https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-belle/blob/master/src/_...

From what I recall, the shading for inset and outset is left up to the browser and is different for different browsers.

Did Windows 98 have smoooth transitions, though?

Haha, you got a point there ;)